Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/274

Rh of the feeling of the future that is always in him. The hero may have driven off the line: it does not matter; he has a faculty of recovery, his second shot will be an especially great one, and the fault of the drive will be redeemed. Some years ago Mr. J. E. Laidlay shared with Messrs. Ball, Tait, Hutchinson, and Hilton the leading position among amateurs; and if my memory serves me right, he won both spring and autumn medals at St. Andrews. On one of these occasions he was frequently off the line with his drive, but he went round in under 80, and to anybody except the golf hero to be off the line from the tee would mean to be nowhere. The great players have an extraordinary power of getting out of a difficulty: the very sight of one seems to put new vigour into their whole system; and if any definition of a golfing hero be possible, it would seem to be that to them, and to them only, is given the power of getting out of difficulties and the power to do the something extra, the few yards' extra carry, and the laying a ball nearly dead with the iron club.

The golf hero has one great advantage over